NetBSD Archive

Before the BSD kernel starts

Thom Holwerda 2020-11-24 NetBSD 1 Comment

In this article, I will walk through the early kernel initialization process, defining the meaning of this term. System initialization is a broad topic that ranges from the platform’s hardware design all the way up to typical functions of an operating system such as handling I/O operations. It is not possible to cover the entire topic adequately within the scope of an article. In this first part I will describe the well-known AMD64: 64-bit platform. I am going to highlight a very interesting part of the initialization process the early initialization of the kernel. Later, I will compare it with ARM64. In both cases I will discuss the topic in the context of NetBSD, the operating system known for its portability. Some light reading.

Wayland on NetBSD – trials and tribulations

Thom Holwerda 2020-09-29 NetBSD 19 Comments

Related to yesterday’s post about NetBSD switching to ctwm: After I posted about the new default window manager in NetBSD I got a few questions, including “when is NetBSD switching from X11 to Wayland?”, Wayland being X11’s “new” rival. In this blog post, hopefully I can explain why we aren’t yet! The short answer? Wayland is too Linux-specific to be easily ported or adapted to NetBSD, so don’t expect it any time soon.

Default window manager switched to CTWM in NetBSD-current

Thom Holwerda 2020-09-28 NetBSD 4 Comments

For more than 20 years, NetBSD has shipped X11 with the “classic” default window manager of twm. However, it’s been showing its age for a long time now. In 2015, ctwm was imported, but after that no progress was made. ctwm is a fork of twm with some extra features – the primary advantages are that it’s still incredibly lightweight, but highly configurable, and has support for virtual desktops, as well as a NetBSD-compatible license and ongoing development. Thanks to its configuration options, we can provide a default experience that’s much more usable to people experienced with other operating systems. The ctwm website has more information for those interested.

NetBSD 9.0 released

Thom Holwerda 2020-02-17 NetBSD 3 Comments

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 9.0, the seventeenth major release of the NetBSD operating system. This release brings significant improvements in terms of hardware support, quality assurance, security, along with new features and hundreds of bug fixes. Support for the ARM architecture seems to be a major pillar of this new release.

NetBSD 8.0 released

Thom Holwerda 2018-07-23 NetBSD 13 Comments

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 8.0, the sixteenth major release of the NetBSD operating system.

This release brings stability improvements, hundreds of bug fixes, and many new features.

Major changes are a rework of the USB stack and the addition of USB 3.0 support and Spectre and Meltdown mitigations.

NetBSD network security audit

Thom Holwerda 2018-05-28 NetBSD No Comments

As a part of a funded project, I am conducting a security audit of NetBSD's network stack. The work will end soon, and I would like to briefly present some results.

Clear, concise introduction. I like it.

Porting NetBSD to Allwinner H3 SoCs

Thom Holwerda 2017-07-09 NetBSD 1 Comment

A new SUNXI evbarm kernel has appeared recently in NetBSD -current with support for boards based on the Allwinner H3 system on a chip (SoC). The H3 SoC is a quad-core Cortex-A7 SoC designed primarily for set-top boxes, but has managed to find its way into many single-board computers (SBC). This is one of the first evbarm ports built from the ground up with device tree support, which helps us to use a single kernel config to support many different boards.

NetBSD 7.1 released

Submitted by uridium 2017-03-16 NetBSD 6 Comments

NetBSD 7.1 has been released.

Some highlights of the 7.1 release are:

Support for Raspberry Pi Zero.
Initial DRM/KMS support for NVIDIA graphics cards via nouveau (Disabled by default. Uncomment nouveau and nouveaufb in your kernel config to test).
The addition of vioscsi, a driver for the Google Compute Engine disk.
Linux compatibility improvements, allowing, e.g., the use of Adobe Flash Player 24.
wm(4):
- C2000 KX and 2.5G support.
- Wake On Lan support.
- 82575 and newer SERDES based systems now work.
ODROID-C1 Ethernet now works.
Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements.

NetBSD 7.0 released

Submitted by 2015-10-09 NetBSD 2 Comments

NetBSD 7.0 has been released. It's got kernel scripting with Lua now, and introduces support for a whole bunch of new ARM boards, as well as support for multiprocessor support for ARM. There's a whole lot more, so go check it out.

A reimplementation of NetBSD using a microkernel

Thom Holwerda 2015-06-18 NetBSD 7 Comments

Based on the MINIX 3 microkernel, we have constructed a system that to the user looks a great deal like NetBSD. It uses pkgsrc, NetBSD headers and libraries, and passes over 80% of the KYUA tests). However, inside, the system is completely different. At the bottom is a small (about 13,000 lines of code) microkernel that handles interrupts, message passing, low-level scheduling, and hardware related details. Nearly all of the actual operating system, including memory management, the file system(s), paging, and all the device drivers run as user-mode processes protected by the MMU. As a consequence, failures or security issues in one component cannot spread to other ones. In some cases a failed component can be replaced automatically and on the fly, while the system is running, and without user processes noticing it. The talk will discuss the history, goals, technology, and status of the project.

NetBSD launches stability updates

Guest post by jessesmith 2014-11-22 NetBSD 26 Comments

The NetBSD project has announced two important stability updates for its highly portable operating system.

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 5.1.5, the fifth security/bugfix update of the NetBSD 5.1 release branch, and NetBSD 5.2.3, the third security/bugfix update of the NetBSD 5.2 release branch. They represent a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, and if you are running a prior release of either branch, we strongly suggest that you update to one of these releases.

Details on the two updated branches of NetBSD can be found in the release notes for NetBSD 5.1.5 and NetBSD 5.2.3.

NetBSD 6.1 released

Submitted by Drumhellar 2013-05-19 NetBSD 3 Comments

"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."

NetBSD 6.0 released

Submitted by ebasconp 2012-10-17 NetBSD 18 Comments

"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.0, the fourteenth major release of the NetBSD operating system. Changes from the previous release include scalability improvements on multi-core systems, many new and updated device drivers, Xen and MIPS port improvements, and brand new features such as a new packet filter. Some NetBSD 6.0 highlights are: support for thread-local storage (TLS), Logical Volume Manager (LVM) functionality, rewritten disk quota subsystem, new subsystems to handle flash devices and NAND controllers, an experimental CHFS file system designed for flash devices, support for Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) protocol, and more. This release also introduces NetBSD Packet Filter (NPF) - a new packet filter, designed with multi-core systems in mind, which can do TCP/IP traffic filtering, stateful inspection, and network address translation (NAT)."

Microsoft’s eMIPS Port Now Part of NetBSD

Submitted by reez 2011-01-26 NetBSD 3 Comments

A month ago Microsoft released a NetBSD port for their eMIPS ("Extensible MIPS") platform. Now the port found its way into the NetBSD source tree. "The 'extensible MIPS' is a dynamically extensible processor for general-purpose, multi-user systems. The reconfigurable logic (Extensions) dynamically load/unload application-specific circuits. Extensions add specialized instructions to the processor, security monitors, debuggers, new on-chip peripherals. Extended Instructions dramatically speedup application programs, just by patching their binaries." Besides the eMIPS port, Microsoft also contributed a machine independent framework for hardware accelerator scheduling, a scheduling policy for it, and a secure executable format.

NetBSD 5.1 Released

Guest post by ZacharyM 2010-11-19 NetBSD 37 Comments

Another version of the extremely portable unix-like operating system NetBSD was released today. This release fixes many security issues and bugs. It also includes a good amount of new features. Please read the announcement here.

NetBSD 5.1 RC4 Released

Submitted by Ed 2010-09-28 NetBSD 21 Comments

From the NetBSD Blog: "The fourth (failing further faults, final) release candidate of NetBSD 5.1 is now available for download. Those of you who prefer to build from source can continue to follow the netbsd-5 branch, but the netbsd-5-1-RC4 tag is available as well. See src/doc/CHANGES-5.1 for the list of changes from RC3 to RC4."

Introducing NPF, NetBSD’s new packet filter

Submitted by Ed 2010-09-15 NetBSD 30 Comments

"The NetBSD Foundation is pleased to announce NPF, a new packet filter by Mindaugas Rasiukevicius. NPF is designed for high performance on multiprocessor machines, and for easy extensibility."

Kernel Testing in Userspace with ‘rump’ on NetBSD.

Submitted by Ed 2010-08-22 NetBSD No Comments

On the NetBSD Blog, there's an in depth article about how rump can be used for testing and debugging the NetBSD kernel in userspace. "This article explains how rump is the enabling technology for a safe, fast and run-anywhere kernel test suite which requires absolutely no configuration from the person running the tests."

NetBSD 5.1 RC2 Released

Guest post by Ed 2010-06-02 NetBSD 12 Comments

NetBSD 5.1 RC2 has been announced. A complete list of changes between 5.0 and 5.1 is available in diff format here for the more technical individuals. Fire up those VMs and give it a test run.

Kernel Modules Autoload from Host in Rump in NetBSD

Submitted by ZacharyM 2010-04-28 NetBSD 24 Comments

"Since early 2009 NetBSD and rump has supported execution of stock kernel module binaries in userspace on x86 architectures. Starting in -current as of today, kernel modules will automatically be loaded from the host into the rump kernel. For example, when mounting a file system in a rump kernel, support will be automatically loaded before mounting is attempted."